If you can't fit the bill in your pocket...
VINNY GOOMBA
Posts: 1,818
...it shouldn't be considered for a vote in Congress. The Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and The Constitution combined can all fit into the average front or back pocket of your pants. There should NEVER be a bill written that would take more than a few hours to read through thoroughly.
Fuck these 1,200 pages bills that no one reads before they vote on them. This is a joke already. How about the tax code-- how large is that? 30,000 pages+?
Anyone who votes in favor of a bill that they didn't even read should be impeached. It's treasonous. Thoughts?
Fuck these 1,200 pages bills that no one reads before they vote on them. This is a joke already. How about the tax code-- how large is that? 30,000 pages+?
Anyone who votes in favor of a bill that they didn't even read should be impeached. It's treasonous. Thoughts?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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That's why they should have a line item veto.
Perhaps precisely because the original documents are so short with zounds of room for interpretation, subsequent bills need a lot more space just to pinpoint what exactly they are dealing with. One thing is haveing a sheet of paper saying "All men are free", something quite other to outline in general practice what that exactly means in specific cases. The longer one think on something, the more one can find exceptions, problems and so forth.
But bills can certainly be written in plainer language, and the US have gotten the bad habit of porkrolling all sorts of stuff into bills. That is not a good thing. But I dont necessarily think brevity is a quality to look for in itself in a bill, because that will probably mean that several subsequent bills and amendments are needed to clarify.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
The major problem is subject matter unity. This country is so much bigger than when it was founded. Used to be individual spending measures were given to the President to sign or veto as he saw fit. As were individual laws, because there just wasnt all that much to be done in a smaller, simpler country. Now, hundreds of spending items and measures are rolled into massive, impossible to read bills. Thus you have things like a law designed to regulate the credit card industry, but stuck into it is a provision about guns in national parks. The president can't veto because the other stuff needs to pass. It's Congress's way of buying each other's votes.
All the line item veto did was separate out provision (and I believe it was limited to spending actually) that he thought were unnecessary or shouldn't be in the bill before him... a way of essentially breaking bills up into more manageable chunks like they used to be. The "vetoed" items were returned to Congress which had to vote on them. They didn't even need to get the 2/3 override to pass something struck with a line item, just a regular majority... it was just a way for the president to be like "smells like pork guys, are you sure about this one?" It forced legislators to make sure their spending had independent merit, rather than burying unnecessary perks for their home state in huge bills. A bridge from alaska to an irrelevant island would never stand on its own before the American people... but you bury it in a bill that keeps our military functioning and there's no choice but to pass it.
For some reason, the SC found this unconstitutional. Hell, when even the republicans can agree to give a democrat they loathe (Clinton) this kind of power, you know it's not that controversial. It was our best shot at regulating federal spending, and the court killed it.
So now we still have 10,000 page bills that nobody understands that ensure that the lawyer friends of the lawyers that enacted them will have a long, promising future income from trying to figure out what the hell it all means.
Those very local, blatant vote-buys shouldn't happen imo. So porking should definitely end.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
absolutely!
brevity may not be my strong suit
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow